Thank you, Chair.
Good afternoon, Minister, panel members and, certainly, the secretariat.
Thanks for the opportunity to appear as a witness on this very important issue for our industry. My name is Gerard Chidley. I'm an independent owner-operator from Newfoundland and Labrador. We own and operate a 20-metre fishing vessel on the east coast of the island. We are a multispecies licence-holder with a vessel crew of seven members. It's a family-run business and has been that way for 50 years, with 50 years of experience fishing on the ocean in many NAFO divisions and for many species. My certification includes a Fishing Master, First Class and a Master, Near Coastal certificate in the Merchant Marine.
In those years, I served in many capacities and chaired many different organizations and fleets. I have served as ICCAT commissioner, NAFO commissioner, chair of the FRCC, and industry chair of MUN and CFER. I've chaired our crab and shrimp committees and served on the inshore council for 10 years with the FFAW, of which I'm still a member. I've partnered with the Marine Institute, which is a division of MUN, in bycatch reduction trawl designs, as well as in energy efficiency studies on trawls and vessels to provide a more ecofriendly operation.
Early in 2021, I was made aware that there were discussions under way to look at reducing breaking strains on haul-up ropes to allow the rope to bust in the event of entanglement with right whales. I remember my first thought: right whale, wrong solution. I remember discussing this with some of my fellow harvesters and I thought that whoever came up with this had never spent any time on the North Atlantic fishing crab, cod, Greenland halibut or any other fish that required the use of haul-up lines.
In November of 2021, I wrote an email to some of our regional DFO people. I included some of our Newfoundland and Labrador federal members and some of our provincial people. I've shared that email with you for your reading enjoyment. The fact that this hasn't been viewed as a ridiculous idea is the reason I'm appearing before you today. I'm hoping to shed some light on the devastation this will cause our industry by answering, from my experience, any questions you may have.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, we work in a completely different environment on the east coast. We encounter every obstacle from ice to debris lost from cargo ships in storms.
Not many incidents encountered are reported. You may ask why that is. It's because we communicate with each other and provide positions of danger on a real-time basis. This is what we need to do to mitigate any possible right whale encounter before it becomes an incident.
Put a tracking device on the animal at first sight and broadcast the positions on a real-time basis. I have reviewed the sighting maps provided by DFO. We do not have a right whale problem on the east coast. Simply put, you may never have to deploy a tracking device. You will note that in my email, I spoke only to breaking strains, but the same applies to ropeless fishing gear. While most of us have individual quotas, we do not operate on individual pieces of ocean like patches of farmland.
I will highlight what I know to be major issues that threaten our resource if we go down this ill-conceived path.
Loss of fishing gear inflicts huge replacement costs on harvesters. There is ghost fishing at a time when money has been spent on clean oceans initiatives. There is a threat to conservation and sustainability of resources due to the immeasurable impact of lost gear and ghost fishing. There are higher fuel costs due to more trips being necessary to land product, as well as the impact on onshore employment when fishing trips are lost or reduced.
Certainly at a time when the environment is front and centre, there must be concern for the increase in the carbon footprint of fishing when more trips are necessary. In all of this, the unintended consequences of reducing the gear-breaking strains is that this gear can now be parted by small pieces of ice, and other small mammals will become entangled due to the smaller diameter of the rope.
Those are the notes I've provided for the meeting. I made some notes by hand so I could continue, because as I spoke a little faster, I still have a minute or so left.
As I mentioned, tracking the right whales provides many benefits, whether they come into our fishing zone or other zones. We use satellite tags to track bluefin tuna. Breathing animals would be easier, as they surface to breathe. The benefits are not limited to insight into the life cycle of the right whale; they incluse a real-time record of the migration routes and any deviations, accurate time of entry and departure electronically, the ability to broadcast real-time positions to ocean users and increasing co-operation from industry and other ocean users.
Last but certainly not least is the safety concern, which is of the utmost importance to us as vessel operators. Reducing breaking strains poses a huge risk factor if the rope parts while in the hauler. That's why we change our gear every four years. If the gear is frayed, there's always the risk that someone will get struck with it when the rope parts.
There were no meaningful consultations by DFO with industry on this issue, other than an invitation to participate in a Zoom call, where most of the allocated time was taken up by presentations and very little time given to engage industry. Being an optimist, I'm going to give DFO the benefit of the doubt on this one, and being an optimist, I will take the lack of consultations by DFO with industry on this issue to mean that a lack of sightings and presence in our fishing zones means a minimum likelihood for sightings or other incidents to occur, and therefore no action is necessary. The DFO whale group headed by Wayne Ledwell also agrees with this.
What is disconcerting is the lengths those organizations will go to in order to forward their cause with a seeming disregard for the impact on other ocean users and environments. What's equally disconcerting to me is that the governments of the day—that's not reflecting any colour—are willing to condone those antics, as they are extremely damaging to the value of our industry and in turn our rural economies.
Thank you.
